
Member story
“We accomplished more in those 30 minutes than we have in three or four sessions with other career coaches.”
Readwise Team
Erin, Eleanor & Abigail · Readwise
USA · readwise.io ↗ · Aug 2024
The Work
Tell us about what you are currently working on.
We're Readwise. We have two main products. Readwise 1.0 is a highlight aggregator that pulls highlights from any digital reading tool (Kindle, Instapaper, Pocket) into one database and exports them to your note-taking app of choice like Obsidian, Notion, or Evernote.
The second is our Reader app, an all-in-one Read It Later tool for web articles, PDFs, email newsletters, RSS feeds, and ebooks. Same as our original product, any highlights you take get exported back to Readwise and on to your notes.
Erin handles community marketing, customer service, affiliate marketing, and feature requests. Eleanor leads our QA department, finding bugs and helping the developers fix them. Abigail writes our weekly newsletter and handles editorial projects, including internal guides for employees.
Before
Before you learned about GrowthMentor, how did you deal with the challenges you faced?
Erin came in with two core challenges. On the tactical side: building up our affiliate network and reaching out to existing users in a non-sleazy way to get more user-generated content for our YouTube channel and marketing materials. On the softer end: improving communication skills, since we're a fully async remote organization.
Eleanor was navigating a personal brand pivot, looking for ways to navigate the modern social media landscape professionally without it feeling like marketing.
Abigail was building out a new homepage footer to help existing users find documentation and attract new customers, plus learning editorial SEO best practices and time management as part of a remote async startup.
The Decision
What ultimately compelled you to sign up for GrowthMentor?
We're a fully async remote organization, and we needed expert input that we couldn't easily get from internal channels alone. GrowthMentor gave us 1:1 access to specialists across all of our different functions, from affiliate marketing to QA-adjacent personal branding to editorial SEO.
Inside the Platform
What's your favorite thing about GrowthMentor?
Erin: I was expecting my sessions to feel very boilerplate, like being run through a typical process. But I found that my mentors really tailored my sessions to my specific needs. Even before we had the session, they both sent really detailed follow-up messages through the portal asking me what I was struggling with. They came to the meeting already really knowing me as an individual.
Eleanor: The one thing I was most afraid of was that the people I talked to would be working off the same playbook as I was. But there were moments where mentors were in adjacent fields where I got valuable outside perspective. Even if you feel very knowledgeable about your own niche, having that outside adjacent perspective is really valuable.
What topics have you mostly discussed with mentors?
Affiliate marketing strategy, async communication, social media navigation for personal brand, editorial SEO best practices, and time management.
The Breakthrough
Is there a specific session/mentor that stands out in your mind as super helpful?
Sarah Keffer was a standout for both Erin and Eleanor. Erin met with her right ahead of an annual review and got incredibly helpful framework for negotiating salary and raising sticky topics. Eleanor was impressed by how targeted Sarah was and how well she knew the landscape.
Mikel Ayala, who leads growth at Atani, helped Erin think through ways to reach out to more potential affiliates and build a powerful creator community.
Lindsey Paholski gave Eleanor great nitty-gritty tactical advice. Courtney Damji helped Abigail with time-blocking and balancing personal and professional commitments.
The Transformation
How has GrowthMentor helped you?
Erin acted on having tricky conversations with confidence, and is preparing to present a new community plan to our co-founders. The frameworks from Mikel are shaping how we build the community Readwise side.
Eleanor has been using LinkedIn more strategically and feeling better about reducing Twitter time, even with the challenge of building reach under a pen name.
Abigail feels much more ready for an upcoming SEO consultant call, with a better grasp on general practices and terminology. She also audited her time effectively, even though she didn't stick with strict time-blocking.
We accomplished more in 30 minutes than we have in three or four sessions with other career coaches. That's the consistent thread across the three of us.
The Verdict
What three adjectives would you use to describe GrowthMentor?
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